Alas! alas! alas!
The skies are torn, the heavens crash,
From pole to pole in terror rending,
Mountains against mountains dash,
The blinding lightnings blaze and flash,
And are shaken the foundations
Of the earth, for earth is ending.
Black the air and black the waters,
Lifeless the life-giving sun;
Woe upon earth's sons and daughters,
For the Wrath is now begun.
Ah, too late you clamour wildly,
Earth is blind, and earth is dumb,
You by earth and earth by you
Child and mother are undone;
Let your cry to God ascend,
For from God the terrors come.
Now the father is destroyer
And the mother is the grave,
Woe is us for God forsakes us
And 'tis God alone can save.
Oh, a union of destruction
Sons of God and nature's daughters,
Seed of terror, seed of evil,
Nurtured for the hungry waters.
Is there help now? Oh beseeching,
Raise for help impotent hands.
While the frenzied winds are roaring,
Hound-like loosened from their bands,
And the waters' tumult reaching
To the stars, where quiet stands
God contemplative. Destruction,
'Tis the uttermost destruction he demands!
Now the waters are uprising
And the mountain summits bend,
Headlong all the turrets hurling,
Towers and temples now descend;
All in black confusion whirling
Earth and heaven rocking blend,
In the waters wildly swirling
To annihilation's end.
Alas! alas! alas!
Neither foothold, hand-hold, safety
For the body nor the soul.
Cracks the earth, the heavens rend,
And the waters of despair consuming roll.
SONNETS
TO J. F. W.
We've touched the borderland of death and life
And come back to the primroses again,
And see with different eyes the slanting rain
Buffet the larches in a short-lived strife;
With different eyes, for we have looked on death,
And know what life is for; we felt the hand
Of that sad Lady of the other Land,
And now, with her released, we draw our breath.
Life is for gladness, not for mulish days
Between the galling shafts of commonplace.
See, now, the willow tassels all ablaze
Against the background of the windy blue!
And in the dusk the crocus glimmers through
The footsteps of Persephone we trace.